I blame my dad for passing on a particular quirky gene onto me – playing jokes on people. I take great pleasure in scheming, hatching and collaborating with other jokers and like Frodo in the Lord of the Rings I am on a quest – to find the perfect joke. The joke gene lay dormant [...]

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The evening of Friday 15 August was an absurdly funny one.    The occasion – dinner at mum’s to celebrate her partner Peter’s name day. According to the Greek Orthodox tradition when someone is named after a saint or martyr that day becomes their “name day”.  This happens on most days and is celebrated with a [...]

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The first of the families had arrived at the settlement camp 10 days ago, the young girl had been exploring the unfamiliar terrain and unusual rock formations, noticing the strange dull brown dirt and the green hues of sparse low lying plant life.  What an odd planet.  She had spied a small cave a few [...]

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As a child I remember we always had a container of neapolitan ice-cream in the freezer.  There was always a thin strip of chocolate on one side, a thin strip of strawberry on the other and the thickest strip in the middle – vanilla. The vanilla ice-cream was always left behind – a lump in [...]

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You are at work and the phone rings, you pick up the receiver and a business associate says. Hi, how are you?’ and you respond ‘fine thanks, and you?’ Everyone involved in this duplicitous dialogue knows that the health enquiry was disingenuous and so was your response. So why do we do this day in [...]

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I was preparing for a light hearted post about my travel and film making adventures but something else came up and I am compelled to write about it. I consider myself a pretty social and good natured person, however I a feel trapped when invited to traditional rituals including weddings, christenings, baby showers – you [...]

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My partner is from New Zealand. Teasing each other with our pronunciation is one of our favourite past times. Julian thinks that the words ‘here’ and ‘there’ rhyme. His logic for this is that the Beatles came up with the song ‘Here, there and everywhere ‘ (bless his little cotton socks). In Julian’s defence this [...]

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